What could possibly go wrong with this plan.
In a bid to extend the reach of its Medal of Honor: Warfighter brand, EA chose to test these boundaries by updating the official Warfighter site to include links to the sites of the real-world weapons and weapon accessories manufacturers that are helping turn the game into the “most authentic shooter” yet.
Anyone visiting the Medal of Honor: Warfighter site can click through to these external sites and, where legally permitted, purchase weapons like the ones featured in the game.
Just like owning a working HALO assault rifle that shoots NERF darts! Except for the NERF part.
SteveinSC
There, Fixed by the NRA.
Tuffy
Shitty post, Tipper Gore.
Culture of Truth
well shoot
PZ
Unrelated, just got an e-mail from Fire Dog Lake asking money for me to send to protestors at the Democratic Convention in Charlotte. Do these people really not get it? Cause we all know Paul Ryan and Barack Obama are basically the same person…
Culture of Truth
@PZ: You’re just asking for a condescending lecture from Bernard…
MikeJ
@Tuffy: Dumbass comment, dimwit.
As a gamer I generally come down on the “it’s only a game” side of the line. EA are the ones blurring the line. A real AR-15 shouldn’t be treated like a video game accessory.
vestigial
A lot of sore shoulders, I imagine.
The Bearded Blogger
@Tuffy: So, you’re cool with facilitating access to guns for gun nuts who are de-sensitized by video game violence? okeydoke…
raven
For everyone that thinks having a bunch of armed civilians running around protecting us from crazy people watch what happens when trained people fire on a crowd. Notice the dude in charge who’s weapon jams and look where other people firing are. Nice way to get shot in the back.
dmsilev
@PZ: I’m going to regret asking this, but what exactly are they planning to protest about?
And yeah, there probably are somewhat better uses for the money.
The Bearded Blogger
Minor point, but the conflation of honor with being a psycopath is sickening.
The Bearded Blogger
@dmsilev: There’s plenty to protest about BHO’s goverment (specially wrt baknsterism, civil liberties, due process, etc), and it’s important to do so. Doesn’t make BHO a bad president, he’s been quite good.
kindness
Swweeet. How much for that Abrams tank?
Shawn in ShowMe
I know EA stock has been in the doldrums the last 5 years but I never thought they would become so desperate to attract an audience. This is what happens you neglect the quality of your sports franchises. What’s next, selling the company outright to Smith & Wessun?
fanshawe
I still have trouble believing that “Medal of Honor: Warfighter” is the actual title of this game and not a joke title that someone came up with to point out how creatively bankrupt the FPS genre has become.
See also Comcast’s new slogan: “The Future of Awesome.”
Culture of Truth
Does this violate that law about claiming medals you didn’t win?
Douglas
@The Bearded Blogger:
Except all that “videogames are gonna make our kids violent mass-murderers” is a bunch of bullcrap.
What you should actually worry about is making it even more likely some some dumbasses (who happen to be gamers, instead of movie goers, bookreaders or whateverelseonemightenjoy, in this case) to buy an actual weapon cause it’s cool, and they saw it in their favourite work… and then accidentally shooting someone (probably themselves) cause, surprise surprise, guns don’t work that way in reality.
sagesource
@The Bearded Blogger: Just for the record, there is exactly zero evidence that video games desensitize anyone to anything. The “studies” that purported to prove that were ridiculously poorly designed farces that were actually showing that people who do exciting things get excited. Duh.
If video game violence desensitized people to real violence, you’d expect the rate of violent crime to be rising. Well, no. It’s fallen very considerably since 1994, the year that the first truly mass-market shooter, Doom, came out. You can’t even say that video games and rising violence are correlated — if anything, they are REVERSE correlated, proving according to the usual assumptions that video games discourage violence.
Arm The Homeless
@Shawn in ShowMe: I fear the day someone goes on a spree killing, shouting “Take this you goddamn campers!”
FlipYrWhig
@PZ: One recent time reading TBogg, I saw a bunch of boxed ads to click to raise attention about Bradley Manning. I assume it’s that sort of thing.
Shawn in ShowMe
@The Bearded Blogger:
Protest without coverage to put it into context is worthless. I’d take all that energy and money being spent on demonstrations to buy out and staff a major media organ, like Newsweek. At least people would get the truth while sitting in the doctor’s office.
sagesource
@Shawn in ShowMe: Not to mention their electronic anti-cheating software, Origin, which you’ll find if you read the fine print on the agreement can help itself to any and every file on your hard drive, without exception. Wonder if they’re data mining on the side and selling the info to all comers?
FlipYrWhig
@sagesource: I haven’t been a big-time video game player since Atari, but the one odd psychological experience I had after playing/watching modern games came while driving. After playing a car-racing video game, I felt like my heart was racing while driving a real-life car. It was a mild instance of the mental experience of gaming carrying over into real life. Is that at all common? Has that been studied?
The Bearded Blogger
@Douglas: I’m against censure in games as I am in everything else. But D. Grossman makes a compelling argument (“On Killing”) that simulated violence de-sensitizes and enables true violence. Not a simple, linear thing, but rather it removes a barrier
SenyorDave
@The Bearded Blogger: I believe this is a tipping point election. If Romney wins we are offically done for decades. The R/R ticket is far moe dangerous than McCain/Bubblehead because of the Teabaggers influence. To waste significant money/resources protesting becasue you didn’t get your pony that you believed was promised is stupid. Hopefully they won’t get much in donations.
The Bearded Blogger
@Shawn in ShowMe: I agree there are better uses of resources to further progressive causes (dem primaries!). But people who want to protest have legitimate causes.
The Bearded Blogger
@SenyorDave: agree on the humongous importance of these elections. Not only would the RR ticket be disastrous, it would be empirical proof that millionaires can buy the presidency, and it would encourage a further decline into oligarchy. Even if Obama were half as good as he is, I’d still think his reelection should be absolute top priority.
The Bearded Blogger
@sagesource: There’s more to causality than correlation. I’m open to my mind being changed, but Grossman’s arguments in On Killing seem convincing (not that Video Games cause violence, but rather that they remove an instinctive barrier to it).
O/T Man did I enjoy playing Doom! although, to my tastes, Wolfenstein was the better game
PZ
@dmsilev: That’s the thing-they didn’t say what they were protesting. They just said some stuff about Occupy and how FDL was sending a reporter to Charlotte to report any civil liberties violations. Funny, they didn’t say there were sending one to Tampa…
Amir Khalid
EA is a company that profits from literally turning warfare into a form of recreation. EA and weapon makers join forces to persuade people that weapons = cool toys; EA sells more games, the weapon makers sell product to people who have no need of them whatsoever. Meanwhile, a TV network mashes up the bloody business of soldiering with entertainment in a “reality” TV show called Stars Earn Stripes.
Where do you suppose all this is headed?
fanshawe
I remember back when Guitar Hero and Rock Band were popular and the Video Game narrative briefly switched from “Video Games are muder simulators that will teach your children to kill” to “LOL you dumb kid, you can’t learn the guitar from pressing a few buttons.” That was a good time.
Catsy
And the sad thing is, this is far from being the shittiest thing that EA–one of the worst, most anti-consumer publishers in the entire game industry–has done.
The Moar You Know
@SenyorDave: Nope. That was 2000. But you’re right about Dems and liberals (not the same thing, I get that) being done for decades if R&R win.
We’re fucked anyway, but I see no reason to make things worse.
ShadeTail
@The Bearded Blogger:
Compelling arguments might make for entertaining reading, but raw data is better for actually proving a point. And the raw data say that there is no connection between violent video games and real-life violence.
mechwarrior online
@fanshawe:
Hillary Clinton and Liberman turned themselves toxic to people of my generation with their crusade on video games.
And really, most video game violence comes from people killing themselves and others over MMOs. Often in hilarious fashion.
The Moar You Know
@Amir Khalid: Guy named Gibbon wrote a stilted but great history that has a lot to do with where all this is headed. I’m sure there are others.
TenguPhule
Given how sloppy our gun laws are, I expect some 16-18 year old will get in the news by buying a gun through a link and doing something stupid with it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Odd story – my friends brother was deployed to Iraq as a medic. He said every day the soldiers would come back from patrol to play Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. (mind you, beyond Blackwater shooting the town every time they came threw there wasn’t any insurgency were he was) I just thought it odd they would spend the day walking around in the desert just to come back to play a game based on it.
Darkrose
Screw that. I want Bethesda to make it possible for me to buy a daedric battleaxe, an undead horse, and a sweetroll. In Steam.
daveNYC
Those sweet roll models are pretty tasty looking.
Also too, Aliens pulse rifle or get out.
FuriousPhil
@Darkrose:
All I want is some armor for my horse.
As someone who still plays video games like Skyrim, GTA, and yes even FPS from time to time; the entire point of these games is that I’m not vicariously gunning down enemies because I wish I could do that IN REAL LIFE.
Games are fun. Keeping an arsenal of weaponry in the basement of your mom’s house is not fun, it’s weird and creepy. Encouraging game players to buy real weapons from a game they are playing is irresponsible.
WereBear
@The Bearded Blogger: Except for the shocking realization that it is not, in fact, the same at all.